Exhibition at Five Rivers Health and Wellbeing Centre and Wessex Gallery Showcase

The City Story: Historic Past, Creative Future project has been a great success with young people taking part in afterschool clubs, Saturday workshops for young carers and sessions for schools and colleges at the museum.

The 11 – 18 year olds have been working with inspiring local artists to explore the extraordinary objects in the museum’s Salisbury History and Costume collections.

They have learnt new skills in a variety of techniques including ceramics, printing, glass and painting with light on the museum’s unique Coo Var Glow Wall.

The museum has also been working with fashion and textile students from Wiltshire College to create a range of textile items inspired by the collections.

In October, an exhibition opened at the Five Rivers Health and Wellbeing Centre in Salisbury to celebrate the work of those taking part in the afterschool clubs as well as the project with Wiltshire College. The display shows the amazing art work that has been created by the young people.

The work of the young carers who have taken part in the programme of Saturday workshops at the museum is also being celebrated in the Wessex Gallery Showcase at the museum. A vibrant selection of the ceramics, textile and 2d art that has been created by these talented young people will be on display in the museum until January 2018.

City Story: Historic Past, Creative Future has been generously supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund Young Roots Grant.

Our own Katy England has been leading this project, with help from local artists and from a small group of Volunteers. Thanks and congratulations to all involved.

With the Terry Pratchett: HisWorld exhibition as their inspiration, one hundred children this morning, and surely as many this afternoon, have reveled in the opportunity to allow their imagination to run riot. They have been creating their own worlds, using a tempting array of resources, with wonderful results.

The adults present were clearly enjoying the creativity as much as the youngsters! Thank you Liza Morgan and thank you, as always, to the willing Volunteers, without whom these things could not happen.

Summer is here (according to the calendar anyway!), school’s out and Discovery Tuesdays at the museum are packed. Last week we had printing with Charlotte Moreton.

This week they are making Noah’s Ark with Charlotte Stowell, which may actually be quite appropriate for the weather!

Photo courtesy of Charlotte Stowell

Next week, Tuesday 15 August Sarah Holtby will be working with the little ones to produce Layered Landscape Ceramic Tiles and Pots, and the week after, Archaeologist Chris Elmer will be taking them digging.

Many thanks, as always, to the Volunteers who help make it all happen!

Hello! My name is Emily Lomas and I’m a Year 12 student at Godolphin. For my A levels I’m studying Latin, History of Art, Maths and Chemistry. I hope to go on to study Classics or History of Art at university, and I am considering working in a gallery or museum after that.

One of the reasons I chose to come to Salisbury Museum for my work experience was because it is a familiar place for me, having come here a lot with my family when I was younger, and having volunteered at the Festival of Archaeology last year. I also wanted to learn more about what it would be like to work in a museum and the different types of jobs that you can do.

During my first two days, I helped with school ceramics workshops, where the children were encouraged to look around the museum and gather ideas which they then combined with inspiration from the artist Antony Gormley to form designs for clay structures which would be part of an art exhibition at their school. I found it very rewarding to see children who had initially been reluctant to join in sketch some ideas and eventually produce some really good work.

I also helped with after-school art workshops for teenagers, which was more relaxing as they were smaller groups than the ceramics workshops, until I was asked to join in myself! Not being much of an artist, I was slightly reluctant at first to produce a sketch of an object from the collections, but it didn’t turn out too badly and it helped me to focus more closely on one particular object, rather than scanning a whole display case quickly without really examining each item.

On Wednesday morning I made a film using footage of students exploring stories and the Salisbury History Gallery collections using the Glow Wall. This was really fun to make and I really enjoyed seeing all the ideas they had come up with and incorporating them together into a short video. (We hope to put this video up for your enjoyment soon.)

On Thursday I assisted with a group of primary school children who came to learn about the museum. They were taught about the history of the building and then we helped them dress up and do some Tudor role play, which they really enjoyed! The most difficult bit was sorting out the costumes afterwards, and trying to match the ‘Tudor Lady 2’ petticoat with the ‘Tudor Lady 2’ skirt! However, it was worth it to see the children laughing as they were instructed to bow and curtsey to the visiting “prince”.

In the afternoon I went round Salisbury to deliver leaflets about the upcoming Festival of Archaeology, which, although I was a little nervous at first and I had to cope with the 30 degree July heat, turned out to be an enjoyable and valuable experience, and everyone I spoke to was very friendly.

I had an extremely enjoyable and useful week, and I would like to thank everyone at the museum for making me feel so welcome and for offering me the opportunity to do my placement here.

Museums at Night – a twice-a-year event when museums, galleries and heritage sites try to do something a bit different to highlight British culture.

Friday 19 May was a damp evening, in contrast to the weather recently, but visitors turned out to see Greg Chapman, back by popular demand. His lively (juggling, story telling and unicycling) version of history is not to be forgotten!

It will soon be time to wish Intern Sophie a fond farewell, when we seem hardly to have had the chance to get to know her!

Here is her latest blog – and it is yet another interesting one…

In my last post I wrote about the physical jobs I’ve been doing at the Salisbury Museum – moving, packing, drilling, painting and the like, as this was what I was focusing on at the time. However, throughout all of this I had small pockets of time up in the office (with magnificent views of the King’s House and Salisbury Cathedral) to get on with the desk-based side of things.

This has covered a wide range of jobs to support the de-installation of Constable in Context as well as the installation of British Art: Ancient Landscapes (open 8th April – 3rd September 2017). From drafting thank you letters and checking through the loans agreements, to researching all of the artists in order to write stewarding notes with interesting facts, it has given me a real insight into the less visible processes behind putting on temporary exhibitions.

Alongside my exhibitions work I’ve also got to know MODES, the collections software, testing some developing aspects of it, as well as working with the learning team, particularly on the Trowel Trail.

I have had great fun working on the Trowel Trail and now that it has launched, I hope many families will too. It is the new family trail that runs through all the permanent galleries and has a theme of archaeology. From a series of questions written by another volunteer, Ian, I was tasked with pulling it into a finished product. I enjoyed going around the galleries, trying to see things from a child’s perspective and testing the questions. I picked a simple colour theme that borrowed the navy of the museum’s logo and got going, drawing numerous trowels and employing free access images in combination with photographs of objects in the collection. With a few tweaks to the logo to follow consistency standards, it was done! Complete with the set of orange trowels in situ in cases, the trail has been popular with children I’ve seen using it, so hopefully this continues!

Sadly, my time on placement is nearly over – just some map designs, a questionnaire and environmental monitoring to go before I head back up north to Durham to finish my Masters degree, leaving a trail of orange trowels behind me. I have learnt just how much you can achieve in a week; that the buildings here are every bit as important as the collection; the friendliness of a small, close-knit team with an abundance of knowledgeable volunteers; and that the sun (almost) always shines in Salisbury – I’m sure I’ll be back soon.

…numbers? No – these are LEGO bricks! In this, the museum’s second collaboration with the family-owned Danish company LEGO, John Constable’s fabulous painting, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831) is coming to life today as a brick by brick construction. This is part of the museum’s Aspire programme of activities ( Aspire is the programme which has brought the painting to Salisbury and is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Art Fund ) which continue until March when the painting moves on.

Volunteer Catherine O’Sullivan looks on as the youngsters admire their handiwork!

A lot of Volunteers are assisting with this epic undertaking today. Thank you!

Visitors investigate Charles Darwin’s theories of the evolution of beaks and the similarities between human and primate behaviours. Do your facialmannerisms resemble those of chimpanzees or orang utans?

Art works in clay, pastels, water colour and collage vividly demonstrate the impact of Stonehenge on the artist’s imagination. How would youdepict sunrise behind the trilithons?

Entry is free and visitors enthusiastically chat with exhibitors and staff about the displays, how they have been curated and their contribution to learning.

All this joy of learning without tests!

Guessed it?

This all happened at Wyndham Park Infant School mini-museum – the culmination of an outreach project organised by our Learning Officer Owain Hughes with Sharina Yark, Wyndham Park History co-ordinator.

The idea grew from Owain’s suggestion (to the local primary school history cluster) that we can support schools in delivering their curriculum through visits to Salisbury Museum and outreach work from Owain and his team of volunteers.

In this case, the three Year 1 classes visited the Wessex Gallery and Owain’s workshops and the three Reception classes and three Year 2 classes each received visits and support in school. The climax of the project was the mini-museum. All 270 pupils contributed to a display in their school hall which opened for an afternoon with all classes visiting, as well as families dropping in to enjoy the exhibition of the children’s work.

As well as providing a vehicle for much enjoyable learning in school, the project clearly raised awareness of, and enthusiasm in the community for, our museum and the services it provides.

It’s been a creative couple of weeks in my traineeship. From writing a Christmas press release to thinking up Constable craft activities, I have really had to put my brain to work!

A main focus of mine over the past few weeks has been developing plans for our outdoor Constable trail. This involved a lot of walking around Salisbury and The Close, gaining inspiration for possible activities and questions to include within the trail. With the help of Owain, our Learning Officer, a general layout was put together. I was then able to take these ideas to our brilliant designer, who is currently in the process of creating the finished product!

With the trail now out of my hands, it meant that the last of my individual projects was effectively finished – with this in mind, it was time for me to look ahead. Last Saturday was the November session of our monthly Young Curators Club, run by Katy (City Story Officer). The Club is something I am very passionate about, as getting younger generations more involved in museums is one of my main career goals. Therefore, I was very happy when a few weeks ago, Katy asked me to help plan an activity for this Constable themed session. The first part of the morning would involve a fabulous actor, Tim, taking on the persona of the ghost of John Constable. Mr. Constable’s ghost gave the attendees a brief background to his life, before showing them around the exhibition itself. It was then my job to create a Constable craft activity to do for the rest of the session. Wanting to create something novel that the children could take home, I began looking into the possibility of creating semi-3D versions of Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows. Knowing my drawing skills were probably not up to the job, I asked Chris, one of our reception staff, if he would be able to create such an activity.

Big thanks must go to Chris, he really went above and beyond what I asked of him! He drew the most amazing Cathedral, tree and horse and cart, all of which would stand up against another hand drawn background. The Young Curators were then able to colour/paint the cut outs and background to make their own 3D version of the painting. The finished products were simply outstanding and a great deal of artistic license being used meant that they were all brilliantly unique!

Below are just a few examples of the finished product!

I really enjoyed both the planning and the actual session and hopefully, if Katy will have me back, I can continue to do more sessions with the Young Curators.